Remember: Seats double as floatation devices. Secure your oxygen mask before putting it on a child. When on ground, seek shelter. If shambling hordes approach, shoot for the brains. Avoid meat that appears flavored. Do not loot during daylight hours. This is not a drill, people. This is Mayday, as in May and Day.
The Yankees - aka The Evil Empire - are now a second place team. And for the first time in his vaunted career, Mariano Rivera - greatest closer in history - has failed to record one single out in a save situation. Not one.
Speaking of "one" - another game in which we scored one run. We are one game behind the Redsocks. We have just blown two masterful pitching performances, and we are now on our first three-game losing streak, heading for four. Last night, we started no player with a batting average over .300. Several stars - most notably Ichiro, Wells and Sabathia - face career-threatening tailspins. Our best player lately, Brett Gardner, has begun bouncing off walls like a diseased starling; we know how that ends. We cannot score runs. And Mariano... not one out.
They say he's only human. They say it's only one game. They say there is always tomorrow, which is already today, but you know what? When people are on a sinking ship, it doesn't matter what they say, because words do not change the outcome. The rest of us just hear the sound of a giant tree crashing in the forest, which is the language spoken by the God of the Old Testament, and all we can do is plug our ears. Kaboom, everybody. Ka. Boom.
We spent the first third of the season enjoying and admiring a team of plucky overachievers. And nobody - not God or Bud Selig - can take that from us. In fact, if Satan had said we'd be in second place, a game out, at the end of May, we'd have traded that dingy soul of ours in a heartbeat.
But suddenly, we look dead in the water, and that re-injury to Granderson seems a particularly nasty act of divine cruelty. What did we do to deserve that? In recent years, the Mets have often used the Subway Series to re-inject hope into their desperate clubhouse, while we stumble over a pothole that shouldn't be there. This time, though, they stuck in the knife and twisted the handle. This time, folks, they hit an artery.
Well, Tex is coming back, and Youkilis and Andy, too. The Ichiro Experiment is winding down. Change is on the way, and not soon enough. The engines have failed. We're going to attempt a landing in the Hudson. Brace for impact, everybody. And remember: Shoot for the brains.
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